Hadda use google to find out what the “ultimate conspiracy” even was…so there’s some big unifying dealy behind the superhumans of the Ultimate MU? Whoop-de-doo.

Okay, I read Ult. Spidey for a while and the first Ultimates series, so I’m only semi-familiar with the UMU. Lemme rehash what I know and then make crap up.

Spider-Man, the Hulk, Giant-Man, and all of Spidey’s villains were failed attempts to replicate the Super-Soldier Project. SHIELD is nose-deep in it. This we know.

Let’s see…work in mutants, the Ult. FF…

Going back to Dubya Dubya Deuce, the super-science that led to Nazi megaweapons and the Captain hisself were derived from alien hardware. Was it the Chitauri? I forget. Let’s say it was. If it wasn’t, replace “Chitauri” with Kree, Skrull, Badoon, or whatever the hell you want.

Maybe mutations in humanity are the result of an ancient Chitauri mucking with humanity. They monkeyed with early humans and created the potential for superhumans, resulting in mutants throughout the ages and splinter-races like Inhumans and Atlanteans. Mutations emerge when certain undetectable genetic codes fall into place.

Recently, humans have been able to trigger the Chitauri mutation potential intentionally, via “super-soldier serums” and the like. We don’t know what we’re doing, but sometimes we get lucky. That’s where non-mutant superhumans come from.

(This also explains the unreproducability of Captain America — it wasn’t the super-soldier treatments per se, but rather the treatments inadvertantly triggered Steve Rogers’ potential for mutancy. Maybe the treatments shaped the mutation, maybe not.)

Given the political atmosphere of the Ult MU, where every damn thing is a conspiracy, then of course SHIELD and the US gub’mint is in bed with the Chitauri. The human race is one of many around the galaxy that the Chitauri are genetically tweaking, seeking to create their own super-soldiers.

Once we reach a certain level of superhumans, they’ll come and harvest the lot of ’em and turn them into a wing of the Chitauri army. Humanity will be their specially-bred attack dogs, sent in because they’re tough, adaptable, and expendable.

Why is SHIELD and the Gub’mint cooperating? Again, given the adolescent cynicism of the UMU, a combination of mind control and dirty quisling traitors. A few high-ups are aliens in disguise, a few others are power-hungry traitors, a few more are soiled idealists hoping to figure out a way to save humanity, and the rest are mind-controlled dupes.

However, we’ve become too dangerous for the Chitauri. Intellectual advances made by Reed Richards and Tony Stark have taken humanity in unexpected directions. Their tech, while currently laughable by Chitauri standards, is expanding too fast and may become a threat. They fended off Gah-Lak-Tus, fer cryin’ out loud!

Worse, the discovery of extra-dimensional superhumans (“Asgardians”) allying themselves with the humans has made the prospect of harvesting and enslaving the Earthlings even more of a dubious proposition.

–It was never alien tech but a time-traveller, bringing future tech back. Maybe a mutant who was mistaken for an alien.

–The Chitauri Master Plan for Earth was abandoned eons ago. Another race “won” the right to be the super-soldiers. And after the events of “The Ultimates,” the Chitauri are coming for some payback, and bringing their super-toys with them…

–There is no vast conspiracy. It’s a smokescreen created by SHIELD to lead the curious and the insane down blind alleys, so they miss the real stuff.

–The whole Ultimate Marvel Universe is the dream of an autistic boy.

–The secret master planner is the mutant villain Apocalypse. The rise of mutants has been too slow, and he’s kickstarting it to hasten his rise as Master of the Earth.

Other possible twists and reversals to my sketch above, in a desperate attempt to make it a little bit interesting…

–SHIELD isn’t behind it. SHIELD isn’t in league with it. SHIELD isn’t even fighting it. SHIELD has no idea the conspiracy even exists. Nick Fury is not the master puppeteer, forcing the world to dance as he likes. Instead, he’s out of touch and caught totally off-guard by the Ultimate Conspiracy. He thinks he knows what’s going on and he thinks he’s playing everyone. In truth, his machinations have made him irrelevant.

–The human quislings are not the wealthy and powerful. Instead, they’re a scattered collection of “everyday people” around the world: A janitor in Shanghai. A weaver in Lagos. A schoolteacher in Vancouver. Each one is part of the Conspiracy Master Plan. The lynchpin of the Earthbound part of the Conspiracy is a homeless man in Detroit.

–In a horrifying turn of events, the Asgardians turn against the humans and ally with the Chitauri! Our only defender against the treacherous Aesir? The Mighty Thor!

–To control the humans, the Chitauri scoop up huge collections of ordrinary folk, rapidly mutate them, and slap brainwashing cyber-skulls on them. New York City is under attack by a thousand superhumans, including the now-invincible Aunt May and Robbie Robertson!

–Would-be world conquerors band together. Doctor Doom has a brilliant plan to save the world. But he won’t do it unless the heroes meet certain conditions. Conditions that ensure that, post-Chitauri, the world WILL BE DOOM’S!!! MUH-HA-HA-HAAA!!!

–The strategist capable of anticipating the Chitauri’s moves is not Captain America; his thought patterns are too human and too regular. No, the only man who can see things coming is Moon Knight. Unfortunately, MK is completely insane.

Well, since I’ve screwed up what I should be doing this afternnon anyway…

No doubt whatever it is has to be according to the Ultimates recipe, in other words 1/3 rehash, 1/3 update, and 1/3 puree.

So…

The Parkers never died, and neither did Eddie Brock’s father, but they accepted an offer…from a Mysterious Someone…to fake their own deaths and run away to the Beehive, only this time the Beehive’s on Wundagore Mountain. Some other people are there too, although I just can’t think who yet…would’ve said Mrs. Storm, but can’t think how that would fit in now…let’s say once upon a time the Mole Man was invited, too, but he was too crazy. Let’s further say Richard Parker used to work with Norman Osborn before he broke off to work with Brock the elder. And the way the Beehive works is this, they wait until the people they select are seasoned before they take them. Then, in utter secret, they work together to lead the world’s thinkers down carefully-selected paths of their own. Some of the super-science comes from their Mysterious Benefactor, which gives them a leg up on the world at large. Yes, it’s the Evolutionary War, with Richard and Mary and Elder Brock having a love-triangle and Mary and Brock eventually dying, and Richard eventually becoming the High Evolutionary, but we’re not there yet: first, the Beehive. They’re the ones subtly guiding the world into this genetic superpower-madness, under the auspices of their Mysterious Boss-Man, as they were themselves subtly guided by him when they were out in the world. The agent for the Mystery Man is Ultimate Justin Hammer, and he’s the only guy they ever see…while he secretly, simultaneously pursues the larger goals to which the Beehive is only an instrument, amassing power and influence, funding Xavier, funding Oscorp, etc. Making supervillains. Ultimate Nick Fury, himself a beneficiary of Hammer’s secret help in the pre-SHIELD days, suspects that there’s something much bigger going on than what he can see. Little does he know that behind Hammer lies Ultimate Apocalypse — well, I got tired of writing Mystery Man, so all right, it’s Apocalypse, a Chitauri tearaway with his own agenda, who created the Atlanteans, slipped the U.S. the super-soldier technology, etc, etc. Ultimate Namor was his enemy, and the reason he shut the Atlantean experiment down. One of the Beehive’s current projects is Ultimate Warlock, sort of the Anti-Namor. The President takes orders from Hammer, and Osborn knows it. Let’s see, is that enough? Not sure…

…So Bruce Banner knows about it too, I guess, since he was head researcher and couldn’t have failed to notice that they were getting “help” — but then he bought back into the system. Another thing that might have been bothering him is that the super-soldier project was carrying out minor experiments on people without their knowledge, which he perhaps believed might potentially lead to a massive wave of mutations in the future — superhums everywhere, in just a couple of generations. That’s a good conspiracy point, isn’t it? The Ultimates were just the up-front work — the more buried stuff is that the government’s trying to plant mutant “crops” in the general population so they can harvest them later. Ooooh, it’s Scanners!

So to move on: Richard, Mary, and possibly Brock betray Hammer, whereupon the Ultimate Warlock is let loose to destroy the Beehive and everybody in it, as Hammer relocates the facility elsewhere, anaesthetizing the not-yet-fully-conscious Warlock and taking Him with him when he’s done. Mary and Brock die, but Richard survives, and all alone in the wreckage gets into what’s left of all the other Beehive divisions, all the Apocalypse tech, the secret records, everything. Presto, he’s the High Evolutionary, and he swears revenge on Hammer and Apocalypse. Oh, I’ll say Mrs. Storm was with the Beehive, but got away. Maybe someone’s chasing her, or something. Now we’re in Alias territory, I guess, and Sue’s Jennifer Garner: yeah, that sounds about right.

On Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate Spider-Woman: well, I’m sure you can fill in the blanks as well as I can. In this structure, Spidey’s the only supercreature to come out of Beehive/Ultimates research that isn’t under lock and key and microscope — Fury, as he says, can’t touch him ’til he’s eighteen. But why not? He does a whole lot of other legally-sketchy things! But perhaps Fury’s trying to protect Peter, save him for the future as an ally, even. Fury’s role as Ultimates shepherd masks his real goal, which is not only to find out what’s going on, but also position himself so he’ll be able to do something about it later on.

Ah. One more thing. Ultimate Warlock is a “perfect” artificial life-form, designed to be like the Super-Adaptoid — everytime there’s a new mutant or superhuman who gets captured or regulated, a way is found to graft their abilities into Warlock — but Spider-Man is the lone exception. Spider-Woman was created as an extremely covert experiment — fertility drugs slipped into Mary’s coffee — to see if Spidey could be duplicated. But the joke’s on Apocalypse, little did he know Brock and Mary were having an affair!

Spider-Clones…I dunno. Imperfect experiments of similar type?

Ultimate Mole Man was working for Hammer inside Dr. Storm’s big-ass think tank — a “mole”, see? But eventually he went all crazy. But he knows something!